Frail and fragile surely and like children’s toys are the so-called power and wealth of humankind. Suddenly they stream in, abruptly they fall apart, in no place or person do they stand on fixed or stable roots, but driven hither and thither by Fortune’s fickle breeze they forsake those they have raised aloft in unexpected withdrawal and lamentably plunge them into an abyss of disaster. Therefore they should neither be thought nor called good things that in order to double the bitterness of inflicted evils by craving for their return * * * (tr. David Roy Shackleton Bailey)

In this sort of sharpness Junius Brutus deserves particular mention. He noticed that his uncle king Tarquin was picking out all men of promise among the nobility and that among others his own brother had been put to death because of his lively intelligence. He therefore pretended to be dull of intellect and veiled his great abilities by that deception. Leaving too for Delphi with Tarquin’s sons, whom the king had sent to honour Pythian Apollo with gifts and sacrifices, he took some gold for the god as a gift secretly hidden in a hollow stick, fearing that it would not be safe for him to venerate the heavenly deity with an open donation. After attending to their father’s commissions, the young men consulted Apollo as to which among them seemed likely to be king in Rome. The god replied that supreme power in our city would lie with him who was the first to give his mother a kiss. Then Brutus purposely threw himself on the ground as though by an accidental stumble and kissed it, reckoning it to be the common mother of all kings. That kiss so craftily impressed on Earth gave freedom to the city and the first place in the Fasti to Brutus. (tr. D.R. Shackleton Bailey)